


What It Takes

by warriorlarry



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poverty, Prostitution, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Violence, WIP, uhhhhh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-05-21 22:14:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14923817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorlarry/pseuds/warriorlarry
Summary: Modern/Present au where Louis is a depressed homeless guy living in New York whose suicide attempt gets interrupted by the North American leg of Harry's World Tour.





	1. Chapter 1

"You're not supposed to be here."

"I know," Louis says to the middle-aged woman who's just found him wandering the highest floors of an unfamiliar building somewhere near Upper Manhattan, New York. Louis doesn't know where he is; he just blindly opened the first door to a tall building that wasn't locked and walked in. No one's stopped him yet so he hasn't turned back.

"Okay...so you should go," the woman commands him, her voice a little uncertain though as she approaches, steps hesitant in her tight knee-length red dress. She's older, maybe forty, and has long black hair parted in the middle and an english accent. Everything she's wearing is expensive, from the tailored dress to the three-inch pumps on her feet to the gold necklace that curls elegantly into a shell at her throat. She's also eyeing Louis like he might be a wild animal. He must have that flatness in his eyes again - Louis knows it; he's seen it in the mirror too many times to count.

"Oh, you meant this building in particular?" he taps a toe once against the shiny floor they're both standing on, hands in his hoodie pocket, looking all around him. He looks back at the woman. "Sorry, I thought we were having a philosophical conversation." 

The woman looks confused for a moment, like Louis expected, but then she seems to run the conversation over slowly in her head and he sees the moment she understands and goes still. Louis curses his big mouth for the forty millionth time. God, if he weren't such an absolute IDIOT, even he might have been able to pull off killing himself. But no. Instead he's gone and blabbed and made it harder to do what must be done. He should just go. 

These thoughts are racing through Louis' head even as the woman assesses him, takes another soft step forward.

"Are you okay?" she asks, peering closely, taking in Louis’ appearance, which is less than stellar: his eyes have dark circles under them, he knows, and they're probably also red and puffy. He hasn't slept in god-knows-how-long, he's running off of adrenaline and cigarette smoke, lips bitten and bleeding, and he's dressed like a bum off the street, which - which Louis supposes he actually is, come to think of it. His baggy grey sweatpants and old black adidas hoodie hang off him like they're afraid to touch his skin. Louis feels his lip twitch in a half-smile at the question though, a sharp bark of a laugh falling out of his lips at the absurdity of it all, a blinding stab of light amidst all the darkness. _Is he okay._

"You were right; I should go," Louis sighs, not addressing the question at all as he turns back to the last flight of stairs he just came from. For a moment the woman behind him seems to be debating letting him go, and Louis almost makes it past the landing to the set of stairs before he hears her stilettos tapping quickly against the floor behind him. 

"Wait!" She snaps, grabbing his upper arms in a tight brace as she speeds up and rounds him, facing him. "Why were you in here? What were you looking for?" Her eyes are green and kind, but they're also piercing and demanding in a way that sparks something other than apathy in Louis, the firm hold she has on his arms telling him she's not about to let him off without the truth, like she _cares_ , and suddenly for a moment it awakens a part of Louis that he didn't even know he still had, a quaking child-self that still wants to believe in something. The truth drops like a rock from his lips. 

_What were you looking for?_

"The roof," Louis admits quietly, feeling utterly defeated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uh. Sorry for the long wait! I got really depressed and wound up in the psyche ward for being suicidal for a bit which sounds...more alarming than I feel it actually is? But there you have it. Full discretion and all of that. I don't know where this story is going either, but I just did some field research so let's strap on our seatbelts and find out, ya'll! You can find me at warriorlarry.tumblr.com

Anne looks the young man over. He's thin, and terribly pale and tired-looking. He keeps fidgeting, looking down at his feet, which are shifting under him, shoulders crooked like he's trying to stand up straight but can't quite find the confidence. And all the while he won't look Anne straight in the eye after what he said.

 

 _The roof._ This boy is so unlike her son. Anne thinks of Harry, and the idea of hearing him saying those same words with the same meaning behind them sends a lightning bolt of pain through her heart. Luckily, she thinks, Harry would never do something like that. Yet there's something in the fragility of his movements, the vulnerability hidden under a thin, nearly translucent skin of bite and snark, that's just as heartbreaking to her. He's begging for help while at the same time trying to hold help at arm's length: it's so clear in the way even the slightest inquiry has the truth just tumbling right out of him. He looks like he didn't mean to say what he said: like he even regrets it. But Anne is so glad he did.

 

"I'm Anne Cox. What's your name?" she asks gently, even as she pulls the young man a step towards her and, releasing her hold on his upper bicep, she switches arms to take his hand in hers, firm, a silent order to stay, and starts walking towards the stairs down to the green room. To her surprise, he allows her to lead with no resistance, though he seems wary and slow.

 

"Louis," the boy eventually replies, softly, and he looks down as he says it. It's easy to notice how his voice is light and high-pitched when he's not being flippant. _The complete opposite of Harry,_ Anne notices again. She suddenly has an idea.

 

"Louis," she says slowly, trying out the name, "That's a lovely name. My son's name is Harry - Harry Styles I mean, do you know of him?" she checks quickly, but the young man shakes his head, unkempt hair flying. It's greasy and looks like it could really use a wash. She ignores that. The little lightbulb in her mind is also going off in her heart, and Anne knows what that means. She aims for casual:

 

"Say, Louis - are you by chance open to employment at the moment?" It takes a moment to sink in, but when they do it startles Louis so much that he stops dead in his tracks, and Anne is pulled to a stop also by their joined hands. She refuses to let go, still fearing he might run off and complete his destructive plan.

 

"Are you - are you messing with me?" He chokes, eyes wide and wild as he searches her face for some sign of trickery.

 

"Indeed I'm not," Anne shoots right back. If the situation were less dire, she would laugh at how posh she sounds. Apparently sending her to America with a nice dress has gone to her head a bit. Who does she think she is, the Queen?

 

But Louis doesn't seem to find her retort funny; he's still staring at her with something that looks oddly like both dread and hope. She notices that his eyes seem unusually large and realizes it's partly because they're wet.

 

"Are you - I mean - I'm not - doing what?" he finally settles on something concrete, and Anne smiles reassuringly and gently tugs on his hand again, pulling him along, and Louis stumbles after her.

 

"My son, Harry - he's a musician. Right now we're on tour around the world. This is the office near Madison Square. The crew's downstairs having a business meeting before they set up... and we could use another stage hand, or five. Duncan keeps complaining to me that we've no time to even find new crew. I think you'd be perfect, if that's sounds alright with you."

 

"I don't know anything about stages," Louis volunteers weakly. Anne pulls them up short in front of a black door marked "GREEN ROOM" in big block letters above it and smiles widely at him.

 

"Well, sounds like you're about to learn then," she offers. "Want to go around the world on tour?" She shrugs, pretending to be wise and enlightened and not secretly delighted by her own idea. "It seems like more fun than what you were thinking, is all. Whatever it is - why don't you come see the world first and get paid and then see how you feel?" She takes Louis' other hand in hers while she's speaking, mainly because Louis' still doing the thing where he doesn't seem quite able to look at her, and she can see that he's overwhelmed. She wants him to look at her.

 

Finally, after a long pause, because there's nowhere else to look, he does. The open fear and vulnerability on his face says everything she needs to know. 

 

"O-okay, yeah? Alright? If - I mean , I - if you really want me." He ducks his head again and looking at his shoes, waiting for a response. Anne feels her heart soar. It's choking her up a little; she doesn't really understand all of this either but she's beaming.

 

"I do. And more importantly, I think Duncan _needs_ you. He needs more hands travelling with him. And I think I can speak for Harry when I say he would want you with us, too."

 

"Around the _World?_ " Louis repeats, dumbfounded. "You don't even know me."

 

Anne shrugs, nonchalant. "I don't have to. I've met a lot of people, and I can read them pretty well, and I also have a bit of a ~thing with the universe where sometimes, it gives me a little idea, and I when I listen - great things happen." she adds the last bit conspiratorially, but it's the truth. Following her intuition is how Anne has practically run her whole life. And it's led to good places, so far. 

 

Louis looks thoughtful. Stares at their connected hands for a moment, thinking.

 

"Can I ask one favour? Anne?" he says slowly.

 

"Of course you can ask. What is it?"

 

"When you tell the others why you hired me...can you maybe not tell them? About... the roof thing?" She pauses, thinking too.

 

"As long as you don't try anything like it again while we're on tour, you have my word," she replies solemnly. "But. You're going have to tell me something else about yourself if you want me to have anything to tell them at all." Louis nods, understanding, but looks reluctant.

 

"Wonderful," Anne says, sparing Louis of having to tell her his story right now. She opens her arms, an invitation, and Louis steps into them and sinks into the hug. "Welcome to the family, Louis" Anne says lightly, and if there's a damp spot on the shoulder of her dress after they walk into the green room, she doesn't mention it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louis wanders off with his dark thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of me wants to acknowledge that the chapters are short so no one thinks I'm unaware that this isn't usually how chapters work. Trust me, I know - however, I really like the short chapters, they're less intimidating and make me feel like I still accomplished a lot. So. This is how we're doing it!

After he’d reassured, pinky sworn and crossed his heart to Anne that he will come back, Louis left the green room - and all of the awkward introductions and questions that were surely about to be hurtled at him. He told Anne he needed to pop by and grab a few of his things at his house and then he’d be back six am sharp the next morning.

It’s a lie, of course. Louis doesn’t have a house, let alone belongings he needs to “pick up.” All he owns in the world is in the backpack on his back, which isn't much more than a wallet and an ancient, cracked ipod. He’d just needed some time properly alone, to consider. To think about this strange, wild offer and debate whether or not it was worth taking a risk over, or if he should just end it tonight despite his promise to Anne. It was all just a bit...quick.

Louis wanders the streets of New York in the dark, minding the scaffolding as he walks, shivering at the nip in the air that’s making his nose and fingers feel pinched and numb in a familiar way.

New York smells like everything - like car exhaust and wineries and fast food and garbage, punctuated by the odd whiff of someone doing their laundry or cooking, or an exotic perfume. And of course: cigarette smoke, and weed. He runs into an acquaintance, Tom, a street busker with an army of bracelets marching up his thin wrists, and bums a cigarette off of him; Louis’ known Tom since they met a little over a year ago, since Louis has "officially" been living on the street. It still feels like one long, surreal blur.

He feels like he’s made of smoke and cold and dirty clothes and sore shoulder muscles and bad memories that follow him, haunting his waking body as it moves through the night. He pinches the dying cigarette butt as he tries to imagine what it would be like to accept Anne’s offer: strangely, it’s not as appealing as she probably thinks it sounds, and for terrible reasons. Louis isn’t sure he knows how to be a proper person anymore, for starters. He’s lived for so long half-starved and wild, that putting on a pretence of civility feels like more than just a chore now: it feels like a heavy task, a burden he’s not sure he’s up to bearing - what emotional foundation is he supposed to leverage to transform himself from Louis the Bum to Louis the Upstanding Citizen + World Stage Tour Hand in front of these people he doesn’t even know? There are too many unknown variables, he can’t prepare for all of them, and it feels like an attack. Living on the streets, unknown variables mean danger, and danger means death, and though Louis wants to die, he’s keen on choosing the manner of his own death - it’s the only form of control he feels he has left, after all. 

And secondly - Louis swallows hard, cutting into an especially darkened alley and hitching his backpack higher up on his aching shoulders, thinking of the second fear he has - secondly, what if he grows a taste for it? For - anything - again? He’s not sure he wants that. It sounds nice, like a fairytale or a cliche’d story, but Louis knows that in reality, likely whatever he enjoys about this job and whatever new life that it brings him will soon enough get taken away from him again, and then maybe he’ll forget how to handle all the pain and suffering his current life imposes upon him, maybe he’ll get too soft to even kill himself. He’s already a pretty big coward; he worries that if life improves, he might like it, and if he starts liking it, he might want to live, and if he wants to live, he’ll have to face his demons, and no one wants to face their goddamn demons, that’s why they’re demons. 

He shakes his head, hard, and then knocks his own fist against his head for good measure, because these thoughts are bringing things he doesn’t have the strength to cope with anymore, he can’t think about it, can’t even go there - and, see? This is exactly why he shouldn’t accept the offer. He’ll fall apart and it will just be embarrassing because there will be people there - people with _expectations_ of him no less - to witness it. He shouldn’t, and he won’t accept it, Louis decides. It’s stupid, first of all, to think that he can even keep up with a whole team of other people who are not unbalanced like he is, or that he’ll be any good at this job anyway. And he’ll get whisked off to - where? Everywhere? All over the place? With strangers? They’ll hate him and throw him out. Anne will realize she’s made a mistake and will be secretly relieved when he disappears. 

God. That was all just a pipe dream, Louis realizes. It starts to spit cold rain onto his face, making his sweater damp, and Louis pulls down the hood so it’s colder. Good. He needs to feel cold, because he doesn’t want to be reminded of good things, of soft things, warm things, right now. Right now he should put the whole idea of Anne and the tour and the job to rest, save them all some trouble. Tomorrow, he’ll pick a different building far away from Madison Square Garden and throw himself off, and the planet will have one less miserable human on it. It’s a win-win. 

He _would_ like to get drunk though, Louis realizes with a start. The thought feels inspired compared to his other, darker ones, and he grips onto it tightly. Yes: he’ll get drunk, maybe find some weed, and he’ll have one final, happy night alive. That sounds wonderful. More than wonderful: suddenly, it’s all Louis wants. He turns a corner, letting the cold rain hit his face, blinking it peacefully out of his eyes now that he has a plan forming. It’s for the best, Louis decides grimly, and even if it’s not - well, who the Hell even cares? He throws the cigarette butt to the ground and beelines to the place where he knows he can get what he wants. 


	4. Chapter 4

Bleecker Street is a narrow, one-way biker’s path surrounded by brick apartment walls on either side. It’s perfect for being off the main beaten path, but still close to late night bars and busy enough with traffic that a taxi can be flagged down at nearly any time of day or night. Thus, it’s a favoured spot to find punters. Louis reaches the corner of 11th Street when he notices someone following him. 

The feeling at the back of his neck is what alerts him first, but then he hears footsteps and, casually looking both ways to cross the street, spots movement in the shadows. 

There is more than one of them, he realizes with growing dread. 

They cross the street with him, even though they’re a block away, and Louis turns back to 11th, speeding up. The footsteps follow faster, too. 

“Louis!” he spins around and stops, looking at the approaching group of shadows. One of them steps forward; it’s Brandon, Louis realizes - Brandon, who he ran away from over a year ago, and has been avoiding ever since. His heart starts to pound. His former pimp and dealer looks much the same, if a little worse for wear: his golden-blonde hair is a little longer, almost shoulder length, and his face looks older and more pockmarked and weathered, but those deep-set eyes still sparkle with cunning intelligence. 

“Hey,” Louis says weakly, sensing the mood in the air as the four other figures in the dark catch up. It’s not good. And Brandon definitely remembers him. Great.

“Long time no see,” Brandon says casually. His three companions begin spreading out in formation as they overtake Brandon and step closer to Louis on either side. 

“Yeah,” Louis huffs in agreement, taking several steps back as he grips the straps of his backpack nervously. Brandon watches him impassively. “Been…what? A year?”

“Since you abandoned me? Yeah I’d say that’s about right. And I took you off the streets for what again?” Louis can’t help the tremble of fear in the base of his spine. 

“I didn’t - it just wasn’t good for me, Bran. I'm really grateful for everything, though - actually. You saved my life.”

“I KNOW I SAVED YOUR SORRY LIFE," Brandon roars. Out of nowhere, the rage in Brandon's eyes bursts into life - he always had been an unstable one, Louis suddenly remembers with crystal clarity. "It's not about what's GOOD FOR YOU,” Brandon carries on, arms swinging out as he shouts. Louis finches and jumps back. “IT’S ABOUT. FAMILY. LOYALTY - to EACH ANOTHER!”

“You were never my family,” Louis says shakily, and it’s the truth - his mind, for one painful moment, flashes back to his actual family, once upon a time - but he knows even as he says it that he’s gone too far. Brandon's eyes narrow, and Louis is hyper-aware of his "friends" circling behind him. He can feel their presences like a sixth sense behind his back. 

“You’re gonna _fucking_ regret saying that,” Brandon informs him. 

_Already do_ Louis thinks as he dives underneath one of Brandon's lackey's waiting arms. There are advantages to being small and wiry, it turns out. 

Another one of them jumps after him, and with a yell Louis pivots, nearly loses his balance and catches himself on the sidewalk with one hand, before he scrambles up and books it in the direction he came, moving in a large circle to avoid Brandon; his crew are right on his heels, long heavy strides absolutely deafening in the darkness. One of them snatches at Louis’ hood and Louis yells, somehow speeding up, wondering if there’s an alley or something he can dive into and lose them over a fence or something. 

A hand grabs his right arm and _yanks_ , hard, and Louis goes flying to the ground on his side, yelling as his hands and chin hit the sidewalk and he rolls right into a bag of squishy garbage someone’s put out for morning pickup. It smells potently of rot and mold but Louis scrambles away from the group of attackers, backing into it. His backpack falls off as he's scrambling. O ne of Brandon's lackeys strides over to Louis, looming over him, before picking him up by the front of his hoodie and setting him on his feet. Louis recognizes him; his name was Darrel, Louis knew him. Brandon walks up from behind Darrel, brandishing a knife. Louis’ heart is going a million miles an hour, and part of him is wildly hoping that this is the end, while the other part is screaming, _no - not like this!_

Louis lets himself go completely slack, letting Darrel still hang onto his hoodie with no resistance. 

“Don’t worry Lou, I’m not really the vengeful type,” Brandon says lightly. It comes across as pretty much the least reassuring statement ever, considering he’s literally brandishing a weapon. “But I _do_ need my people to understand what loyalty is. I can’t let you get away with - well, _nothing_.“ He shrugs, like he’s delivering a disappointing bit of news. Like the post office is on strike and Louis’ll have to wait till Wednesday to send that letter.

“What’re y’gonna do?” Louis manages through gritted teeth to stop his jaw from trembling. He’s preparing for the worst, mentally. This could be anything, anything - his mind is reeling, thinking of every horrible thing he’s ever seen or heard of done. Curb stomping? Are they going to beat him up and leave him? Rape him? Kill him? He prays it’s the latter, though the prayer feels…hollow, somehow. This really wasn’t how he wanted to go. It makes him angry. 

Instead of answering, Brandon lunges at him with the knife. Louis yells and flinches away, but the knife doesn’t touch him. His former pimp is laughing. Louis struggles to extricate his arms from the hoodie without anyone noticing. There are still two other men watching, but they’re beside Brandon. Only Darrel is actually physically holding Louis. 

“Nothing, Louis. Of _course_ I wouldn’t hurt you,” Brandon says, and then lunges again. This time, Louis' prepared by reclaiming his arms from the sweater, and he slips out of his hoodie. He lets himself fall straight down, scraped-up chin disappearing through the neck. By the time his hands grab his backpack resting on the plastic garbage bag at his feet, he’s already moving. He hears Darrel yell in surprise as his prey gets away, feels an insane relief that he managed to grab his bag, feels something cold slash the back of his arm, coupled with Brandon's cry or rage, and then he’s running - sprinting - into the night, faster than he’s ever run in his life, viciously yanking the backpack onto his bare back as he sprints down the street.

The group of men don’t follow him this time. He hears them yelling and laughing at him, feels the tickle of something warm running down his elbow, but he won’t stop. That hoodie was all he had on, so now he’s bare-chested, running like a madman through the streets with blood running freely down his arm, bag thump-thumping against his mid-back with every step. Louis has no idea where he’s going or how bad the injury is. 

His first and only idea is to run back towards Madison Square Garden. There really isn’t another place for him to go, right now. 

He feels his right bicep pounding with pain, and his palms and chin likewise throb where they’re been scraped up. He looks a mess as he jogs through the streets, that’s for sure. Probably, the tour company won’t even want him when he shows up like _this_. But. Louis has no where else to go. Brandon and his crew really cancelled Louis’ plans for a final fun night out. He can't pick up punters when he's literally dripping with blood - at least, Louis doesn't think so. Either way he's scared off of hanging out on open street corners tonight. Brandon has eyes in a lot of places, though Louis definitely thought he would never run into him this far from Brooklyn. 

He stops at a McDonald's to go to the bathroom and wash off some of the blood. People stare, but it's late and the energy is tensely sleepy. Nobody helps him as he strides in, shirtless and bloody, but neither do they stop him.

When Louis gets to the bathroom he turns around to look in the mirror. His arm's been slashed behind the elbow, not deep to the bone but still fairly deep and long - enough to draw an alarming-looking amount of blood, he figures, but not enough to make him pass out. 

Louis washes his arm in the sink and pulls an old sample bottle of antiseptic from the depths of his backpack. He still has a few of the useful things in here that he did a year ago when he first really started living on the streets, but he hasn’t kept up his supplies. He’s been spending money more on alcohol and weed lately, than on things like food and clothing and medical supplies like he used to. Louis used to keep a small “grocery list” of things he needed to buy. He’d do all the usual things like sit on the sidewalk with a cup and a sign. Sometimes he’d park near a busker like Tom and dance, if they’d let him, and earn his own cash alongside them. When he’d scraped together a few coins, he used to save them carefully for each item - baby wipes and antiseptic had always been rather high on the list. He always knew what stores sold which items the cheapest, to the penny.

Something about tending the wound brings Louis back to that old self, to the one that cared, and was meticulous about survival and things like organization, hygiene and medical care. He’d been determined to make the best of his situation, to prove Brandon wrong that he couldn’t survive without him. When he realized how hard it was to stay alive out here, Louis had turned back to picking up punters on the streets, just without Brandon this time.

When he started getting fifties and hundreds a night, he should have saved for an apartment, done something sensible with it - but instead he just spent it all on hotels and alcohol and pizza and weed. It was the stupidest decision he’d ever made, but he remembers how miserable he’d felt, going back on his own promise to himself. It felt like the universe had shown him the one way to make money that he knew how, and then backed him into a corner where he _had_ to choose that again. He remembers the first pizza he ordered all to himself with that money, and how good it tasted, and how bad. Good because it was hot and loaded with cheese and olives and desperately-needed calories, and bad because it was the symbol of a broken promise.

Several hundred wraps of toilet paper around his arm later, Louis takes off one of his shoes, pulls off a sock, and ties it around the makeshift bandages. He figures that will do for now. He stays a while longer in the bathroom washing up, fills his water bottle with tap water. 

Eventually Louis steps back into the restaurant, lingering in the warmth of the heater blowing quietly by a window for as long as he can before the manager comes and kicks him out for not wearing a shirt. It doesn't even occur to Louis to ask anyone there for help. 

He realizes as soon as he's back out in the freezing night that there's only one sensible place to go. It's a no-brainer, really, if he can't do what he was planning. And maybe  it’s the adrenaline still rushing through his veins, or the close call with death, or maybe it was the quiet time in the bathroom remembering what he used to be like, but right now Louis doesn’t even really feel like dying. Not tonight, anyway. And his brain which is still buzzing with what happened starts to make it all sound so much less scary - and easy, and potentially _fun_  - to go off on some world tour with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. Like Anne vaguely alluded to: what is there to lose?

The only problem is he's not wearing a shirt, and Louis knows how cold it gets at night, not to mention what his future employer will think if he shows up without enough _clothes_ to work. That would be...too embarrassing.

So he goes on the hunt. It's too late to go to the shelter to see if they have anything, so after several botched attempts - nearly two hours of walking - and so much shivering Louis starts to jog just to get his blood flowing, he sees a charity clothes bin is sitting under a streetlamp - like a lit-up Quest Item in a game - next to a local school. He jogs over to it and lifts the flap, reaching shoulder deep into the front of the bin to feel around inside it.

It's pure relief when Louis feels soft cotton meet his numb fingers, and he pulls everything he can reach out so it spills onto the concrete at his feet. There are shirts and pants and yes - bless - even a few hoodies. He immediately starts layering them on, starting with a t-shirt which he manages to shakily get over his head, then another and several sweaters. Two hoodies over that.

He doesn't care about looking ridiculous. He doesn't care about _anything_ as he strips off his sweat pants and starts layering up under those, as well. Long johns and jeans go on first, then his own pair of sweats. There's even a toque and some socks. Louis puts all of these on and puts the rest back in the charity bin, grateful to whoever invented these treasure chests of clothes.

The clothes are fairly hideous, of course. One of the two hoodies he has on is a bright neon green, but the other one is navy blue, and more acceptable. The socks are Christmas themed and one of the long johns were zebra patterned. He absolutely, resolutely does not care in this moment about any of that, but before going to work, Louis figures he'll pair down to the jeans and a t-shirt with the navy hoodie, and either ditch the rest or stuff it into his backpack for when he needs more layers. It also helpfully makes him look like he really did go home to pick up some more stuff, like he told Anne he would.

He wanders back to Madison Square slowly now, warming up but also feeling much safer now that he no longer looks the same as he did a few hours before: Brandon and his people are unlikely to spot him now that he looks like a walking lump of neon green cotton, and this thought cheers Louis up considerably.

It's becoming faintly light, early pre-dawn has the edges of the sky greying, and Louis' spirits lift at that as well. He feels nervous, and tired. Mostly tired. He almost falls over several times on the way back, and the urge to lie down and sleep increases every step of the way. Now that he's warm, it's all Louis wants to do. He's too tired even for the nasty voice in his head to tell him it's not worth it, that this is a stupid idea - so he stumbles on until the birds are chirping, and the whole sky is pale. He makes it to Madison Square Garden and collapses on the stairs to the office building.

Louis isn't sure what time it is - is it six am yet? Do Anne and the others meet before that? Should he go looking for them? He's still puzzling over this question when his eyes begin to droop and he nods off into his own lap.


End file.
